Guinness Celebrates Ice Skating in the 1952 Olympics

Is everyone enjoying the Sochi Winter Olympics? Are you fans of the competition, competitor profiles and advertisements or all? Advertising has always been a part of the Olympics but let’s be honest, we look forward to the competitions and tolerate the commercial interruptions. But the one constant has always been print advertising.

Looking back at the 1952 Oslo games, for which this advertising study was created, the celebrated artist John Gilroy couldn’t pass up the opportunity and created a portfolio of studies for Guinness while working at SH Benson.

Presented here is one of my favorites; a graceful figure skater spelling out ‘Guinness’. Aside from the wonderful rendering of a skater, it is also special because it might be Guinness’ first advertising study with a woman as the central subject.

Anyhow from my point of view, I give her a ’10’ for artistic merit.